Scattered Magic (The Sidhe (Urban Fantasy Series) Book 1)

by S A Archer

“Now, Touch me.” She curled her fingers into his dirty palms.

  “I am touching you.”

  “Touch me, already!” She gripped his hands until her nails stabbed into his palms.

  “I am touching you!”

  “He’s not doing it!” She snapped at the goblins. “You promised he would Touch me!”

  “Touch… Touch…” The goblins chorused louder. Viciousness dripped like venom from their snarls.

  “But I am touching you!” Malcolm searched her face, and then the goblins’, for some kind of clue. Any hint at all. They weren’t making any sense!

  “Liar!”

  The goblins unbound his feet. They flipped him face down. Always so freakin’ many goblins. Fighting always useless, but Malcolm fought against them still. With his arms and legs stretched, they bound him to the table once more.

  The woman snatched a fistful of Malcolm’s hair and yanked his head back. What had been pretty about her before was gone with her red-faced fury. Her lips curled back with hatred. “You have to Touch me now!”

  “But I did!”

  The first strike of the whip sliced across his back. The thin material of his t-shirt shredded. Malcolm screamed.

  “Touch!” The goblins spat at him.

  “Touch me, Sidhe!” The woman yelled, clutching his hand.

  “I am!”

  “Again!” she snapped.

  The whip cracked again. The white hot burn of it lanced across his flesh. Malcolm trembled, unable to process the fullness of the pain. His own agonized outcry a foreign sound. Over and over they demanded the ‘Touch’. Over and over they beat him. Malcolm lost count how many times. His throat screamed raw until it closed up and he couldn’t make any sound. Teeth clenched. Tongue swollen and stuck to the roof of his mouth. Pain beyond his ability to support it. Until… mercifully… he blacked out.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Present Day

  Any other day he would have teleported. Not this day. Jhaer’s feet knew the path, fortunate for that since his senses barely registered the surroundings through the deafening layer of shock. Pastureland yielded to civilization as the early morning light glinted on east-facing windows in Kilkenny. Humans milled about, as humans are wont to do. Jhaer paid them no heed and they returned the courtesy.

  From the outside the safe house appeared to be an unremarkable brick building in an unremarkable neighborhood of light industry and inexpensive apartments. The kind of place, if someone noticed it at all, one would assume was probably unoccupied and unworthy of interest, much less renovation. No mundane human eyes would notice the man in the dirt-smudged clothing turn down the alley and then slip through the Glamour that hid the only unbarred entrance.

  Inside the long, two-story building, remnants of the former occupants remained by way of dusty and discarded industrial equipment and random cardboard boxes of broken junk and packing material. Through a grimy window, not a bit of this rubbish appeared worth the effort to steal. An intentional ploy.

  Glamour again disguised the back hallway to the office space beyond with the illusion of a wall. Behind these multiple layers of protection, Jhaer opened an office door.

  The Unseelie slumped at last in the leather chair behind the desk. Just bonelessly surrendering to the postponed fatigue, staring at nothing in particular. After an unmeasured amount of time, Jhaer opened one of the deep desk drawers. Nudging aside fake IDs and papers of random variety and usefulness in the paper-obsessed culture of the earth realm, he selected one of a handful of cell phone devices he’d procured.

  He found the compatible cord and linked the phone to it and then to the power outlet in the wall until the device lit up, announcing it was charging. Not waiting for it to satisfy its hunger for the power it required to function while disconnected, Jhaer slid his finger across the touch screen.

  The contacts symbol appeared on the first screen. He tapped it, then selected the first name of a Sidhe he scrolled to. The device chirped several times before the fake voice asked him to leave a message. Probably this particular Sidhe had been in the Mounds.

  Jhaer rubbed at his face with his hand, as if this might wipe away the memories. Might prevent the thought of her as the crushing weight of failed magic snuffed out the light of her spirit without even the echo of her scream surviving to mark her passing.

  They could not all be dead. They couldn’t be. Even though at the moment he felt utterly alone and disconnected from all he’d known and held dear. Jhaer slid his finger over the device to scroll the list again. Hunting… Searching for a name… Any name… Of someone who would not have been in the Mounds that day.

  And found one.

  Tiernan Kilgrave.

  Jhaer held the device to his ear. Each hollow chirp like a knock on an empty house. A summons to someone who was not there and could not hear.

  “Hey, Jhaer. What’re you doin’ up here? On another mission?” Tiernan’s Irish accent lilted with informal familiarity uncommon among the Sidhe of the Mounds. “Where are you? Your office? I’ll pop over.”

  Without waiting for the invitation, the young Unseelie appeared sitting on the corner of Jhaer’s desk. Though only a century or so old, Tiernan’s cocky attitude didn’t soften for even the head of the Unseelie Elite. Then again, most exiles “didn’t give a shite” about customs in the Mounds. Tiernan swept Jhaer with his light, nearly colorless eyes.

  “Been in a scrap? You look wrecked. Did the other bloke survive?”

  “I doubt it,” Jhaer said seriously. “They’re gone. Everyone. The Mounds. Just gone.”

  Tiernan lifted a brow, the grin disappearing. “Gone? What do you mean gone?”

  “The Mounds collapsed. Nothing but a crater left. The Seelie crushed our home to pieces!” Jhaer pounded his fist on his desk, wishing it had connected with Lugh’s proud chin instead. Why couldn’t those arrogant Seelie have just listened to him? Not even just him, but all the Sidhe whose warnings and predictions fell on deaf ears?

  “Ain’t that a kick in the bollocks?” Tiernan’s attention slid around the office, taking mental inventory of the equipment on the open shelves, his composure not even mildly ruffled by the devastating news. “Surprised it took this long, really.”

  Jhaer glared at his fellow Sidhe. “How can you be so casual? We’re all going to Fade! The Mounds are gone! We have no source of magic to keep us alive!”

  Tiernan actually chuckled. “No, you have no source. I never was bound to the Mounds.” He shrugged. “It’s not pure Fey, but hey, I don’t have to worry about Fading.”

  Jhaer’s eyes widened as he stared at Tiernan. “You’re connected to this realm? But how? This place isn’t magical. I mean, look at them. Humans have no magical abilities.” His hand swept out in front of him, indicating the general populace.

  Tiernan grinned crookedly. “Humans can’t link to the magic, but that doesn’t mean the earth realm doesn’t have any magic. You need to get yourself connected to this realm’s ley lines, that’s what you really need to do.” He hopped off the desk. “Mounds are gone, my friend. Let ’em go. Get yourself a crew and establish yourself. Earth realm’s your home now. Better to embrace it than die fighting it.”

  Tiernan ripped a sheet from a note pad on the desk and started jotting on it. “I’ll give you a start. Couple of earthborns. Early twenties. One’s got himself locked up by humans, of all things. Bonehead, I kid you not. Other one’s a corner boy, bashing around the streets. Trouble both of them, but you know how to straighten ’em up. Mostly untrained, but you’re good at that, too.” He left the note. “If they work out, you can owe me one.”

  Tiernan clicked closed the ink pen with finality. “And while you’re reinventing yourself, you ought to think about a name change. Something Irish that’ll blend in.”

  Chapter
Twenty-Five

  At his desk, slumped back in the chair, the words of the younger Unseelie replayed in Jhaer’s mind. In the past century or so, many Unseelie had migrated from the Mounds to the surface world. With the expanding power and control of the Seelie Court, the freedom-loving Unseelie found exile more palatable than persecution. The growing number of Unseelie outside the Mounds had made this safe house a necessity, when the Elite’s mission involved reaching out to one of the exiles. Other fey, of course, never fully left the surface to concentrate their numbers in the Mounds. Entire communities of lesser fey lived in secret and seclusion on the surface. But the noble elves, the Sidhe, had always lived in the Mounds before the All-Mother’s Seelie tendencies finally manifested in her growing favor of one Court over the other. Had she stood fast in her neutrality and commitment to balance, none of this would have happened. A pointless regret now. Nursing the pain accomplished nothing.

  Jhaer knew Tiernan’s parents. Remembered when he was just a lad less than a decade old and they left the Mounds. He probably didn’t even have a memory of what it had been like there. Tiernan’s family had been one of the first to leave. More soon followed.

  Lifting the paper Tiernan left for him, Jhaer read the names. Bryce and Kieran. Both just in their late teens. Living for thousands of years, the Sidhe bred extremely slowly, a fertile couple only producing a few offspring in their lifetime. To all appearances, though, the exiles bred as rapidly as the lesser fey and humans. For the most part, Jhaer dismissed the outcast youths as no threat to the Unseelie Court, and not even worth keeping an eye on. Especially when matters in the Mounds with the Seelie deteriorated day by day.

  But these youths were Sidhe, and by definition the personification of magic. Untrained, perhaps. Undisciplined, to be sure. But wild and free and the very essence of Unseelie. And the earthborn Sidhe almost assuredly outnumbered any surviving Sidhe from the Mounds. They were an untapped power, a resource that practically begged predators to hunt them. Jhaer had not missed the rumors about the wizards, long ago driven out of Ireland, beginning to weasel their way back in. Though by far the worst, wizards were hardly the only threat to the Sidhe. Vampires, and even opportunistic lesser fey like the wretched Changelings, would pick off a Sidhe if they could manage it.

  If the earthborns and exiles were all that remained of the Sidhe, the race would be extinct inside a year. Word of the Mounds collapse would already be whispering its way into the wrong ears. Though his people may not have been completely destroyed with the decimation of the Mounds, the end was only postponed until the scavengers descended upon the weak and wounded. Any Sidhe from the Mounds who did not link to the earth realm would Fade, and die from it or from an attack as soon as they grew too weak to fend it off. The earthborns, untrained and scattered, would be as easy to pick off as cubs once the pride that protected them was gone. More merciful if they all would have just died in the collapse than to Fade or die at the enemy’s merciless whim.

  Tiernan was right. The Mounds were gone. The fey realm was never coming back. It was Earth or death. And Jhaer never for a moment considered bowing to death. Not for him. Not for the Unseelie. Not for the Sidhe.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  How exactly the world could come to an end and life go on, Lugh didn’t know. He felt like a sleepwalker. He’d bathed and changed from his bloodied clothing, as he’d done after hundreds of battles before. The routine carried him through where thoughts failed him. The lesser fey handled the preparations for the corpse. Lugh oversaw, more to have another Sidhe present rather than to truly assist. The All-Mother deserved so much more, but Lugh had nothing left to give.

  Her body was cleaned and dressed in glittering white. Her gloved hands were joined together over her stomach, holding the hilt of the silver dagger that slew her. The blade rested between her breasts. The silver did not touch the skin and so would not damage the body further. Danu would not decay. She would just slowly fade away.

  All fey were partially physical and partially magic. Without the constant and renewing breath of magic coming into her, Danu would eventually become less corporeal, becoming as a ghost until finally she vanished into nothingness.

  Lugh helped to lift the glass cover into place over the velvet pallet that served as the All-Mother’s final bed. His tears finally began their silent spill to burn down his cheeks as the procession began into the undercroft deep beneath the temple. The fey scattered a carpet of flowers before them. Fairy lights twinkled in the dark passageway to the deepest chamber, haphazardly strung along the route at irregular heights. A few of the dwarves had carved a fine stone pedestal for the glass casket to rest upon. Lugh ensured its perfect alignment before setting down the burden.

  He knelt before the All-Mother, in her final slumber. His forehead rested against the glass side. Eyes closed.

  All of the fey would Fade now, as the All-Mother’s body did. Mourning her, he mourned his people, his home, his own life. Time would not extend before him endlessly, as it always had in the past. Without Danu, there were no Mounds. Without the Mounds, there was no source of fey magic. The flow and renewal of the magic that fed into each fey and powered their magic came from the Mounds.

  “Why would anyone do this? Did they not know?”

  A hand softly rested upon his shoulder. Lugh ignored it. Only when the hand squeezed did he finally lift his gaze.

  The Scribe offered him a sorrowful smile. During the preparations someone spoke the Scribe’s name. Lugh searched his emotion-torn memory. Willem. The Scribe’s name was Willem.

  “All may not be lost, Champion.” Willem nodded meaningfully across the chamber. All of the other fey had wandered away, dealing with grief in their own ways. The loss of the All-Mother devastated. More than just this, though, all lost family and friends in the collapse as well.

  The fairy lights barely illuminated the mural on the wall that the Scribe indicated. Lugh rose and crossed before the faded images. His skin began to glow with the warmth of predawn, filling the chamber with enough light to see by.

  “What is this?” He studied the circle drawn around the figure of the All-Mother. She appeared to be floating in the air. Small objects circled her.

  “It depicts the story of how Danu created the Mounds.”

  Lugh snapped his head sharply toward Willem, his slightly pointed elfin ears prickling he listened with such intensity. “Continue. Tell your tale, Scribe.”

  “Few survived the collapse of the First Fey realm. The realm from which all fey creatures first arose. Unlike the Mounds, it was a true and separate realm of existence. Danu was one of the Sidhe who escaped. It was not long before the Fade began to set in.”

  Lugh knew this much. And knew they faced the same peril now.

  “She gathered together artifacts that survived the collapse. Items that were imprinted with the magic signature of the first realm.” Willem brushed his hand reverently across the image on the wall, painted with the practiced and skilled hand of a master fey artist. “She used them to create a surrogate realm, the Mounds, in a pocket of magic beneath the earth.”

  “Like a womb,” Lugh agreed. Which was how the Sidhe whose focus of magic was procreation would manifest such a realm. “As she was the Creatrix of the realm, and tied to it, all who linked to the Mounds became tied to her. Becoming as her children.” Lugh moved closer to the images. “Do these artifacts still exist? Could this magicraft be performed once more?”

  Next to Lugh, who towered well over six feet in height, the Scribe’s four-and-three-quarters feet seemed even more diminutive. With Lugh’s inquiry put to him, Willem fidgeted, scratching at his pointed ear. “The All-Mother left a journal, which we of her order have studied in as great a detail as we are capable of. There are unclear passages, which might become clear once the artifacts are collected. The artifacts she used were consumed in the creation of the Mounds.
However, others still exist. Lost. Hidden. Stolen. Passed down from father to son. Put away and forgotten like all other bits and bobs. Their importance forgotten as they became misplaced.”

  “Then how might we discover them?”

  “There are ways.”

  The faint ray of hope broke through the black depths of defeat and death, no matter how slim the chance or how impossible the task. Lugh leveled the full force of his determination at the Scribe. “Then let us begin anew.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  During the daylight hours the streets around the castle in Kilkenny swarmed with busloads of visitors. Jhaer bided his time until the dark of night grew long and the city as still as it was going to be. A modern city had grown up around the castle. As Jhaer strode past the art museum, the castle came into view just across the paved street, as if nothing more special than just another building in a sea of buildings. A high stone wall around the property blocked not only the back access to the castle but the long enclosed courtyard as well. Even as Jhaer approached the wall, he knew exactly where each footfall nearby struck the ground. Tracking movement through the vibrations in the earth came second nature. He had no worry about being seen as he teleported from outside the courtyard wall into the property.

  With the three remaining wings of what had once been a square-shaped castle to his left, Jhaer veered right. A paved walking path stretched into the distance before curving back around the other side of the courtyard that served as a public park. The flat, center expanse of grass during the day hosted picnics and leisure games involving ball tossing or kicking. At night the open field provided no cover, so Jhaer traveled amongst the trees along the courtyard wall.